FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT GAZA STRIP - PAGE 2

JERUSALEM -- Israel severed international telephone links to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Wednesday in what the authorities described as a new effort to put pressure on the organization of the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. The action coincided with one of the worst days of violence in the occupied territories in weeks, with four Palestinians reported killed. The deaths brought the toll since Dec. 9 to at least 92. The Israeli army acknowledged two of the killings and said two more were under investigation.

Faced with dozens of warnings of possible new Palestinian attacks, Israel ordered additional troops to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and maintained tough restrictions on Palestinian movements in those areas. After a Middle East peace plan was introduced in June, Israeli troops withdrew from some Palestinian areas and began lifting a limited number of roadblocks. But renewed violence has left the peace plan in tatters and Israel has reimposed some of the most stringent travel restrictions in months.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hinted Monday that he might delay the evacuation of Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip until mid-August, to avoid overlapping with a Jewish mourning period. In another development, Israel announced plans to build 50 homes in a West Bank settlement, a move that comes just a week after President Bush told Sharon that Israel should stop expanding settlements as stipulated by the Mideast peace plan, known as the road map. "We will be seeking clarification from the government of Israel," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush in South Carolina.

NEVE DEKALIM, Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip -- The advertisements hold out the false promise of a distant piece of property in Florida. "Enjoy the good life," Israeli newspaper ads say. "Live in a young, effervescent community." Television commercials, sponsored by the Israeli government, show happy children`s faces in a beach atmosphere. The pictures are known in the television trade as "tight shots," focusing closely on the subject without revealing the surroundings. The promotions are part of this month`s campaign to "Populate the Katif," an area the Israelis call the "coast of the Negev."

Israel will continue its military offensive in the Gaza Strip at its own pace until Palestinian extremists release a captured Israeli soldier and halt their rocket attacks, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet on Sunday. The operation in Gaza is a "war for which it is impossible to set a timetable," Olmert said, according to briefings provided by an Israeli official. "We will continue this battle with level-headedness and patience, while making use of the proper means," he is reported to have said.

Seven months into her seventh pregnancy, Hanan Suelem fidgeted, shifting her weight on a hard bench in a bare-bones clinic. Beneath her floral headscarf, primly fastened at the chin with a butterfly pin, her face was mournful, the face of an old woman. She is 34, she said, but very tired. Her first two children were planned, the next four "accidents." This time, after one accident too many, she begged Islamic clerics to grant her permission to have an abortion. They told her, she said, that she would be "killing a soul."

Yasser Arafat, the indomitable symbol of the Palestinian struggle for a homeland, entered the Gaza Strip on Friday, ending a 27-year roaming exile and completing an odyssey to territories that he hopes to turn one day into a state. With tears in his eyes, Arafat knelt after crossing the border from Egypt and kissed the ground - land that he has not seen in decades and that for the first time has come under Palestinian authority and, for now, his personal stewardship. Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, moved quickly to affirm his control of the fledgling Palestinian self-rule under way in both teeming Gaza and the much smaller town of Jericho, on the West Bank.

JERUSALEM -- Every Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip is being treated to a movie, but the film is not what most of them would have chosen for Saturday night entertainment. It is a movie about Gaza, produced by the army spokesman`s office and part of the training for soldiers going to fight the 15-month-old Arab uprising. It is an attempt by the army education department to decrease the number of Arab casualties by preparing soldiers for what they will encounter in the crowded alleys and courtyards of the densely populated strip.

JABALIA CAMP, Israeli-Occupied Gaza -- The first thing that hits you is the cesspool of black raw sewage -- about the size of a man-made lake in South Florida -- sitting in the middle of the Palestinian refugee camp of 8,000. Then there is the military post with a company of Israeli soldiers a few hundred yards away, and hundreds of hulks of rusted-out cars dotting a stark sandy landscape, almost lunar in appearance. The sandy dirt roads, some covered by a black slime from oil and mud, are hardly passable.

There are three quarters of a million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, a tiny sliver of land along the Mediterranean. Its southern border is contiguous to Egypt. To the north, Tel Aviv, the largest city in Israel, is only a few minutes away from Gaza Town. The Palestinians live on 240 square kilometers, which makes it one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Settlers heavily subsidized by the Likud government of Israel and who are only 5,000 in number, have taken over 120 square kilometers.